Austin fire tone out

[smorton]

Hi,

Newbie on the forum here. I'm interested in fire tone outs for the Austin fire stations, specifically the ESD 9 station (Westlake fire station on loop 360 by Westlake High school). I searched the forum and the inter web but no luck. I am trying to use audacity to record the tones and get frequencies from it but have not actually tried any of them as of tonight. My measurements of the frequency peaks might not be real accurate.

So....does anybody have the tones? I'm actually thinking of just calling or stopping by dispatch or the fire station and seeing if they will give them to me. Has anyone tried this before and gotten a brush off because they are top secret or something ?

Thanks in advance!

 

[motorola_otaku]

I've used this method before with success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhmoesYtkoU
If you aren't sure if you're getting the right tone frequency, look at a list of common QCII tones and round up or down from what you're seeing on the decoder to the actual tone.

Firefighters at the station likely won't know what their pagers or radios are programmed with, and would be suspicious of someone walking in off the street and asking.

 

[samson512]

I started to compile a list of AFD Tones, but it was way too time consuming. Cant remember the name of the software, but basically I just recorded the Locution frequency and went back played the tones and then listened for the station/apparatus they were calling. My list is very small and ESD9 is not on it. Like I said I mostly gave up because it was just too tedious.

 

[TxFireBuff8]

I am a newbie aswell and too Austin my question for Austin Fire Department Dispatch. Do they 1 dispatch channel for citywide dispatch or do they use 4 or 5 different for the city????

 

[rbarker]

Austin Fire Dispatch

For Austin Fire Dispatch, they will first alert station speakers: using either 154.175 or 154.205
or the locution talkgroup on the trunked system.

They will then assign a response channel. General calls with be Firecom North or Firecom South if it's in the city - I guess the river is the dividing line. but it might be Airport Blvd.
sometimes both these talkgroups are Simulcast.

For County calls, they will be assigned Firecom West or Firecom East with IH35 usually being the dividing line. EMS uses the same terms North, South, East and West but also uses a Medcom Central for downtown.

If there is a "box" alarm or multi alarm they will be assigned Firecom 201, or 202 or any other the others but usually in that order.

 

[motorola_otaku]

Does AFD not use 453.275 for station alerting anymore? Been a while since I listened but used to get it regularly in Houston during band openings.

 

[rbarker]

453.275 has mostly been taken over by Austin Animal Control now. Funny how the Fire dept had to vacate old conventional frequencies saying they needed it for Tv or something and someone else just picked up the old stuff. The State took over some of the old APD 460 frequencies and using it for IT people.